Cryptonomicon

"Cravenly backstabbing the ex-SEAL who served six years of combat duty in Vietnam, and who has scary and well-connected friends all over the world," Randy adds.

"Damn, Randy! I thought I was going to freak you out by telling you about the HEAP."

"You did."

"And then you spring this on me!"

"Life's rich pageant. And all that," Randy says.

Avi thinks for a minute. "Well, I guess it comes down to whom would we rather have on our side in a bar fight."

"The answer can only be Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe," Randy says. "But that doesn't mean we'll make it out of the bar alive."

Chapter 47 SEEKY

They have stuffed him into the narrow gap between the U-boat's slotted outer hull and the pressure hull within, so that bitterly cold, black water streams through with the bludgeoning force of a firehose and wracks him with malarial chills: bones cracking, joints freezing, muscles knotting. He is wedged in tightly between uneven surfaces of hard rough steel, bending him in ways he's not supposed to bend, and punishing him when he tries to move. Barnacles are beginning to grow on him: sort of like lice but bigger and capable of burrowing deeper into the flesh. Somehow he is able to fight for breath anyway, just enough to stay alive and really savor just how unpleasant the situation is. He's been breathing cold seawater for a long time, it has made his windpipe raw, and he suspects that plankton or something are eating his lungs from the inside out. He pounds on the pressure hull but the impact makes no noise. He can sense the warmth and heat inside, and he would like to get in and enjoy both of them. Finally some kind of dream-logic thing happens and he finds a hatch. The current sweeps Shaftoe out, leaving him suspended alone in the watery cosmos, and the U-boat hisses away and abandons him. Shaftoe is lost now. He cannot tell up from down. Something bashes him on the head. He sees a few black drumlike things moving inexorably through the water with parallel comet-trails of bubbles behind them. Depth charges.

Then Shaftoe comes awake and knows that this was all just his body desiring morphine. He is certain for a moment that he is back in Oakland and that Lieutenant Reagan is looming over him, preparing for Phase 2 of the interview.

"Good afternoon, Sergeant Shaftoe," Reagan says. He has adopted a heavy German accent for some reason. A joke. These actors! Shaftoe smells meat, and other things not so inviting. Something heavy, but not especially hard, thuds into his face. Then it draws back. Then it hits him again.

***

"Your companion is morphium-seeky?" says Beck.

Enoch Root is a bit taken aback; they've only been on the boat for eight hours. "Is he already making a nuisance of himself?"

"He is semiconscious," Beck says, "and has a great deal to say about giant lizards--among other subjects."

"Oh, that's normal for him," Root says, relieved. "What makes you think he is morphium-seeky?"

"The morphium bottle and hypodermic syringe that were in his pocket," Beck says with that deadpan Teutonic irony, "and the needle marks in his arms."

Root observes that the U-boat is like a tunnel bored out of the sea and lined with hardware. This cabin (if that's not too grand a word for it) is by far the largest open space Root has seen, meaning that he can almost stretch his arms out without hitting someone or inadvertently tripping a switch or a valve. It even sports some wooden cabinetry, and has been sealed off from the corridor by a leather curtain. When they first brought Root in here, he thought it was a storage closet. But as he looks around the place, he begins to realize that it's the nicest place on the whole boat: the captain's private cabin. This is confirmed when Beck unlocks a desk drawer and produces a bottle of Armagnac.

"Conquering France hath its privileges," Beck says.

"Yeah," Root says, "you blokes really know how to sack a place."

***

Lieutenant Reagan is back again, molesting Bobby Shaftoe with a stethoscope that appears to have been kept in a bath of liquid nitrogen until ready for use. "Cough, cough, cough!" he keeps saying. Finally he takes the instrument away.

Something is fucking with Shaftoe's ankles. He tries to get up on his elbows to look, and smashes his face into a blistering hot pipe. When he's recovered from that, he peeks carefully down the length of his body and sees a goddamn hardware store down there. The bastards have put him in leg irons!

He lies back down and gets slugged in the face by a dangling ham. Above him is a firmament of pipes and cables. Where has he seen this before? On the Dutch-Hammer, that's where. Except the lights are on in this U-boat, and it doesn't appear to be sinking, and it's full of Germans. The Germans are calm and relaxed. None of them is bleeding or screaming. Damn! The boat rocks sideways, and a giant Blutwurst socks him in the belly.